here, have some thick skin
Feb. 8th, 2013 03:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kasihyaLooking back over my tumblr feed the other day, I realized that I actually interact with people a fair amount on the internet these days. There are people I talk to regularly, and besides them, if it's just one or two strangers reblogging something I wrote, or even something I didn't write but something I also reblogged, it's ... okay, it sounds silly, but a year or two ago I was too afraid to even sign up for the site because it was too interactive, and I was terrified of getting any attention because what if it was negative, what if I made a mistake and didn't do something right, oh my god everyone would notice, etc. Didn't tag anything for a while once I realized they went into an aggregate group of tags that anyone could see.
I seem to have gotten over that somewhat. I mean, I still delete half the things I post before anyone can see it, but I respond to other people's posts sometimes. I try harder to have opinions and put them out there.
Of course, putting myself out there, it also means that I've got a bigger chance of being criticized. This has also happened. It still makes me feel terrible about myself. I think, wow, someone didn't like what I said. I'm wrong. I shouldn't have bothered I shouldn't have said anything, how could I be so stupid, what's the point of even speaking up.
When that happens, I need to remember that I am allowed to have an opinion. If my opinion is different from that of someone else, that does not mean that my opinion is automatically worthless and wrong. It doesn't even mean that I have to care about someone else's opinion. I can read what they have to say and decide that they are wrong, and not worth responding to, or I can read what they have to say and decide that they have a point and that still doesn't make me a bad person. All it means is that I was wrong about that one specific thing, or maybe I didn't know enough to speak with the authority I did and now I know better. Either way, my worth as a person does not depend on the contents of one post I make on one website or even all of the posts I make on all of the websites.
It also doesn't matter what one or two strangers on the internet think of me. If I say something that means that someone else thinks I am worthless, but I don't know that person and they don't know me, then it does not matter. (It feels like it matters. That is different from whether it actually matters or not.) I once went to a friend, panicking, because of a report I was going to give in twelfth grade that I thought would make people laugh at me. She told me, I'm not going to laugh at you, and none of your other friends are going to laugh at you. Are you really going to care more about what a bunch of assholes think about you than what your friends think? Which I do not think is a perfect philosophy, but it's what I'm working with in principle.
I seem to have gotten over that somewhat. I mean, I still delete half the things I post before anyone can see it, but I respond to other people's posts sometimes. I try harder to have opinions and put them out there.
Of course, putting myself out there, it also means that I've got a bigger chance of being criticized. This has also happened. It still makes me feel terrible about myself. I think, wow, someone didn't like what I said. I'm wrong. I shouldn't have bothered I shouldn't have said anything, how could I be so stupid, what's the point of even speaking up.
When that happens, I need to remember that I am allowed to have an opinion. If my opinion is different from that of someone else, that does not mean that my opinion is automatically worthless and wrong. It doesn't even mean that I have to care about someone else's opinion. I can read what they have to say and decide that they are wrong, and not worth responding to, or I can read what they have to say and decide that they have a point and that still doesn't make me a bad person. All it means is that I was wrong about that one specific thing, or maybe I didn't know enough to speak with the authority I did and now I know better. Either way, my worth as a person does not depend on the contents of one post I make on one website or even all of the posts I make on all of the websites.
It also doesn't matter what one or two strangers on the internet think of me. If I say something that means that someone else thinks I am worthless, but I don't know that person and they don't know me, then it does not matter. (It feels like it matters. That is different from whether it actually matters or not.) I once went to a friend, panicking, because of a report I was going to give in twelfth grade that I thought would make people laugh at me. She told me, I'm not going to laugh at you, and none of your other friends are going to laugh at you. Are you really going to care more about what a bunch of assholes think about you than what your friends think? Which I do not think is a perfect philosophy, but it's what I'm working with in principle.
